In popular entertainment news

This Netflix movie seems to be attracting a lot of commentary along these lines:

Many, many people seem to be completely puzzled by the glowing professional reviews, and even suspect some sort of chicanery.

Similarly, the new Disney Star Wars series The Acolyte is attracting truck loads of amusing ridicule from former Star Wars fans (and in particular, those "bro" type reviewers who have been complaining - not without some justification - about its obvious feminisation ever since the last 3 movies).   This latest show apparently features a coven of lesbian witches who use the Force to procreate without the need of men, which genuinely does sound like some sort of extreme lesbian fever dream.  And apart from that bit of weirdness, is said to have terrible dialogue, charmless leads, and generally makes no sense.  

I have not cared for the Star Wars universe in any great depth for decades - it peaked at The Empire Strikes Back, after all - although I did keep seeing the movies, except for the last one which it seemed absolutely no one liked much.   None of the Disney TV content based in the universe has impressed me enough to keep watching it after a few of episodes. 

Anyway, the point is that the professional reviewers have generally been praising The Acolyte - and the disparity with audience reactions is pretty huge.  Once again, it seems lots of people don't understand why.  

The only thing that will resolve this will a diminishing audience, I guess.    

 

Trump and the normalisation of his BS

An opinion piece in the Washington Post:

It is irresponsible to obsess over President Biden’s tendency to mangle a couple of words in a speech while Donald Trump is out there sounding detached from reality. Biden, who is old, at least makes sense. Trump, who also is old, rants like someone you’d cross the street to avoid.

We in the media have failed by becoming inured to Trump’s verbal incontinence — not just the rapid-fire lies and revenge-seeking threats, but also the frightening glimpses into a mind that is, evidently, unwell. In 2016, Trump said outrageous things at his campaign rallies to be entertaining. In 2024, his tangents raise serious questions about his mental fitness.

His rally on Sunday in Las Vegas offered a grim smorgasbord of examples, but the obvious standout (and not in a good way) is the story he told about being aboard a hypothetical electric-powered boat. He posits that the battery would be so heavy that it would cause the craft to sink, and he relates his purported conversation with a knowledgeable mariner about this scenario.

You can go to the link to read the whole transcript of this part of his rally.  The article continues:

The White House press corps would be in wolf pack mode if Biden were in the middle of a speech and suddenly veered into gibberish about boats and sharks. There would be front-page stories questioning whether the president, at 81, was suffering from dementia; and the op-ed pages would be filled with thumb-suckers about whether Vice President Harris and the Cabinet should invoke the 25th Amendment. House Republicans would already have scheduled hearings on Biden’s mental condition and demanded he take a cognitive test.

The tendency with Trump, at 77, is to say he’s “just being Trump.” But he’s like this all the time.

Also during the Las Vegas speech, Trump tried to deny the allegation by one of his White House chiefs of staff, retired Marine Gen. John F. Kelly, that he refused in 2018 to visit an American military cemetery in France, saying it was filled with “suckers” and “losers.” Trump told the crowd on Sunday that “only a psycho or a crazy person or a very stupid person” would say such a thing while “I’m standing there with generals and military people in a cemetery.”

But he wasn’t “standing there” with anybody. He never went to the cemetery.

As someone in comments (there are over 9,000 of them) says:

Trump is always posing as the sharpest mind around who asks a critical question that nobody thought about it. Remember bleach as a treatment for COVID? He heard that bleach kills the COVID virus and proposed bleach as a cure without thinking for even a second that doctors and microbiologists are perfectly capable of making that connection. And, without even thinking that if bleach wasn't actually used to treat humans there may be reason --a reason that he never bothered to find out.

He says lots of things about everything but he never has time to check whether he has made an stupid claim because he is to busy making the next stupid claim.

 

 

My own conspiracy theory

An article at the BBC talks about the rapid rise in Chinese manufactured electric vehicles:

With China accused of selling electric cars at artificially low prices, the European Union is widely expected to hit them with tariffs this week.

The BYD Seagull is a tiny, cheap, neatly styled electric vehicle (EV). An urban runabout that won’t break any speed records, but nor will it break the bank.

In China, it has a starting price of 69,800 yuan ($9,600; £7,500). If it comes to Europe, it is expected to cost at least double that figure due to safety regulations. But that would still be, by electric car standards, very cheap.

For European manufacturers that is a worrying prospect. They fear the little Seagull will become an invasive species, one of a number of Chinese-built models poised to colonise their own markets at the expense of indigenous vehicles.

China’s domestic auto industry has grown rapidly over the past two decades. Its development, along with that of the battery sector, was a major component of the “Made In China 2025” strategy, a 10-year industrial policy launched by the Communist Party in Beijing in 2015.

The result has been the breakneck development of companies like BYD, now vying with Tesla for the title of the world’s biggest manufacturer of electric vehicles. Established giants such as SAIC, the owner of the MG brand, and Volvo’s owner Geely, have also become big players in the EV market.

Last year, more than eight million electric vehicles were sold in China – about 60% of the global total, according to the International Energy Agency’s annual Global EV Outlook.

Here's a conspiracy theory I have been thinking about for months:   maybe the Chinese government requires all electric vehicles made there (and especially those destined for foreign markets) to have a software kill switch - so that once they have flooded the Western market with reasonably priced electric vehicles and they want to do something controversial (*cough* invade Taiwan), they can punish the West (if it fights back) by remotely killing all electric vehicles in a software update.   (And they will be clever - the update won't be an immediate kill - otherwise those who first lose their vehicle could warn others not to update.  No, it could just be set so that they all stop working on a certain date.   Perhaps an anniversary important to the Chinese.)   Or, now that I think of it - could the update make the explode-y batteries actually explode?  

So, if they have (say) 20% of the total American vehicle market, that's potentially an awful lot of disruption for a country so reliant on vehicles.   

I wouldn't be surprised if someone else has come up with this idea, but I haven't read it elsewhere - yet.   So, for now, I'm claiming it as a original conspiracy theory.

Romanticising the avoidance of reality

I think it was last week that 7.30 on the ABC ran a story about a 68 year old woman who, while obviously having had a hard life, was also pretty patently nuts on the matter of thinking she could ignore legal actions and (well) reality.

The story is set out at length here, but to cut it short, she had lived in a low cost social housing house in Melbourne for many years when it was part of a managing co-op on which she was a member.  After it got transferred to a different co-op, a move which she didn't agree with, she stopped paying rent to the new owner (claims she kept paying it to the old co-op?), got into arrears for nearly $10,000, got evicted, lost on appeal, got evicted a second time.  After the new co-op sold off the house to a private owner, the house was half demolished, and she still returned to an obviously dangerous house with no utilities and slept in it.  When it was being fully demolished, she was running into the yard and putting herself in danger in front of the machinery until the police intervened.

She had a hard life by the sounds, but it was also clear that she had been given alternative social housing to live in (a one bedroom unit), although it was shown as so crammed full of her furnishings and stuff from the old house that she has made it virtually unliveable.   "Downsizing" is a concept she apparently is unfamiliar with - or rather, which she has obviously avoided "on principle".  

Look, I find this type of journalism that tries to play on heartstrings when it's a person with obvious  "issues" quite irritating, especially when they paint it from one side only.  (There was not a single attempt to have anyone talk about the institutional perspective of running a social housing system when someone refuses to pay the reduced rent, even after losing repeatedly in court, because of "feels", or something.)   It is an example of (dare I say it) the type of Left-ist idealism that is so extreme it becomes divorced from reality - like the posters you will see at any indigenous rally that talk about "Australia" as an invalid concept and suggest you can just hand the country over to the indigenous.  

Let's try to keep it real, hey?

 

Now I'm definitely not going to the Greek Islands

The death of Michael Moseley, who always came across on TV as very likeable and reasonable, was sadly premature.   

But one other thing that came out of that coverage:  am I the only person to think that Greek island didn't look the least bit attractive?  And I have to say that, apart from the startlingly geography of the likes of Santorini, whenever I've watched travel vloggers in the Greek Islands I'm rarely impressed.  Rocky, dry islands with so-so beaches and some scrubby bushes here and there (OK, and the occasional olive tree), just don't do much for me.   

And the food - it's ok once in a while, but it's basically too dull.  I joked to someone recently that it has about 5 national dishes and that's it.    (And they are basically all the same at every cafe or restaurant that makes them.)

The most repulsive billionaire?

So the very week that Fauci testifies about real and continual death threats against him and his family, the ketamine addled brain of a top contender for "most repulsive billionaire" decided to throw his support publically behind the MAGA idiots.  

 

Still here

I had a couple of days off this week, in celebration of a wedding anniversary, and used points to pay for the fanciest hotel at Noosa (now the Sofitel - it used to be the Sheraton) which is right on Hastings Street.

I've never stayed there before, and I was suitably impressed.  (Mind you, if we were paying cash for it, it would want to be good for the very high price for a night with breakfast - about $600.)   The hotel is in good condition - it's been there a long time, but I would say its had an upgrade no so long ago.  The room was huge, and we chose the one facing the Noosa River at the rear.  (I don't think you can see the beach from the other side anyway, due to the rows of apartments across the road.)   It's a nice view at the back:

 

And a late sunset shot:

And the beach itself was in fine form, with a couple of fantastic 21 degree sunny Queensland days:

 

I honestly think this is probably the best beach in the world - facing north, the headland to the East means it's rarely too rough or windy, yet there are usually at least some worthwhile waves to make a swim more interesting than still water.  Nor is it prone to erosion, and the water is nearly always clear.  (Occasionally it will have a temporary issue with some seaweed/algae that blooms naturally, but excessively - but it is very infrequent.)  Dolphins are often to be seen - and koalas in the nearby national park.   And the water temperature isn't too warm in summer, like it can be a bit further north.  It's in the sweet spot of water temperatures off the Queensland coast - not too warm, not too cold.  (I think it was 21 or 22 degrees the other day - which still feels cools when the air is the same temperature, but is way better than typical Sydney beach temperatures.  A few degrees makes a lot of difference.)

So yes, it was a great time.   I could happily retire there, I think; although I do know from living around the corner at Sunshine Beach for a couple of years in my thirties  that you do get too used to beautiful views too quickly.  Anyway, winning the lottery would be required first...

PS - I forgot to mention the lorikeets that were nesting in the planter box on our room balcony.  Very charming.

A movie review, with no swearing

I watched the movie Fall on Netflix on the weekend, and was somewhat impressed.   (I only knew of it because I remembered that Critical Drinker reviewer really liked it - despite it being based around two female leads.)   

I would describe it as generally well made, B Grade melodrama with a massive hook - fear of heights - that keeps you in until the end.   A bit like how I enjoyed that first mega shark movie  as B or C grade material but with fantastic production design and imagery.   (What was it called?  oh yeah - The Meg.)

For those who don't know - two young women, both into "free" climbing (or whatever they call going up sheer cliffs with minimal ropes) - decide (for melodramatic-ish reasons I won't go into here) to do a climb up a needle-thin abandoned TV tower in the middle of the desert, and manage to get stuck on top on the tiniest of platforms. The rest of the movie is about their efforts to be rescued. 

It's one of those movies where you can be pedantic and pick apart many, many details; but I think for most people, the details don't  matter much because of the near constant queasy feeling that comes from so many shots that look convincing (or convincing enough) with respect to height and danger.  (And I say this as a person with an "average" fear of heights:  my personal fear of most note is around claustrophobia in caves.  I actually can't watch films or documentaries which spend any more than a very short time showing cavers crawling through spaces so tiny that they might get stuck.)

Now, it's clear, given the state of movie magic, that the actors would never have needed to be on top of a real 2,000 foot tower to make the movie.   But I was keen to see a "making of" video about it, and there is indeed one on Youtube.

You can skip through the first 10 or 15 minutes of the director and writer talking of their inspiration, etc, until you get to the part where they show how they made it, using a tower that was (I think they said) a hundred feet high, rather than 2,000 feet.   Quite amazing how well it is all spliced together in the movie.

But the other thing that amused me from the "making of" video is that the original script had a lot of swearing in it, and after seeing the rough cut of the movie, the studio told the director they had to change that, because the film would lose too much potential audience with the restrictive rating it would get with the amount of swearing.

(I actually had notice the unusual lack of swearing in the film - it felt like it was a film deliberately aiming for an age range of around 12 to 22.  As it turns out - it definitely was!)   

So, how did they solve the problem of removing so many swear words from a film often shot in relatively tight close ups?   They used "deepfake" style computer graphics to change the speaking mouth shapes to convincingly remove the excessive use of F's and M-F's, and change them to something milder!

That's pretty funny - and just goes to show that they could have saved themselves a lot of effort if they just knew from the start that the studio would not be happy with too much swearing.

Anyway, if you watch the movie, be aware that I know there is a lot you can have issues with - I don't consider it an A grade screenplay by any means.   And there is one technical aspect that I thought was laughably silly - wait til you see the lightbulb at the top of the tower.    But the actors do well enough with the material, and did face a challenging shoot outdoors stuck on a 100 foot tower for most of it.  And it made me feel very queasy, so it's worth watching!

I'm more convinced by the "jail him"! side

A gift link to the NYT:  Should Trump Be Sentenced to Prison? Two Opposing Views.

Rupert likes to live dangerously, apparently

I didn't know these details of Rupert's new wife:

Rupert Murdoch tied the knot for a fifth time Saturday, marrying Elena Zhukova, a retired scientist from Russia.

The couple got engaged in March after they reportedly met at a family event hosted by one of Murdoch’s ex-wives in summer 2023, according to the Guardian. Photos of Murdoch and Zhukova on a yacht soon followed, adding more fuel to the relationship rumors.

There are few details about Zhukova’s history, though multiple reports suggest that she is the mother of Dasha Zhukova, the ex-wife of former Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abramovich, who has been described as a well-connected Russian oligarch.

Whaaat?

Did we ever establish whether Wendi Deng was actually a Chinese spy?   Not satisfied with that possibility, sounds like he decided to go to bed with a possible Russian spy.   I would love to know her views of Donald Trump.

Update:  Lulz -  

 

Tweets of note

 

Reactionary conservatives have become too stupid to bother engaging with (Part 10,000)

They literally have circled around far enough to the Right to shake hands with Communists and fascist murdering leaders (both with territorial expansionary plans) because, hey, any enemy of my domestic political opponent is a friend of mine.

When have we seen such cynical and deadly politics before?  Gee, I don't know.  (The main historical difference being you can't trust the current nutball Right to renege on the peace deal with dictators.)

Amusing technological story

 You have to read the whole, long, story by that Josh Whiton to see why it's funny.   (Turns out that in poorer countries where they buy wired headphones for an Apple, they all know that they only work if Bluetooth is on, and seemingly assume that is normal.) 

The coming disappointment?

Following Trump's conviction, which I was watching live on breakfast TV this morning, I saw two American lawyer commentators saying that Trump may well avoid incarceration in a jail, and have home detention or some other non custodial punishment.

Given Trump's utter contempt for the judge and legal system throughout the trial and after it, it is hard to see why he should be treated with any form of kid gloves.   But the Washington Post confirms the coming (possible) disappointment for all of us who would love to see him in jail:

The charges against Trump are nonviolent Class E felonies, the lowest level in New York, and they are punishable by 16 months to four years in state prison. Legal experts said it is unlikely that Trump, 77, would be incarcerated, given that he had not previously been convicted of a crime.

Other options for Merchan include sentencing Trump to probation, which would mean he would need approval from a parole officer to travel outside the state. Trump also could be fined or granted a conditional discharge pegged to the requirement that he stay out of further legal trouble, legal experts said.

Also - how utterly appalling are the Trump suck ups (Mike Johnson, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, etc etc) rushing to condemn the verdict by parrotting their cult leader's line?   Not a spine - or sense of decency and civic responsibility - amongst them.  It's the most dangerous and corrupt party the country has ever seen.

Update:   The New York Times commentary on this seems to treat the possibility of a custodial sentence more seriously:

A pre-sentencing report makes recommendations based on the defendant’s criminal record — Mr. Trump had none before this case — as well as his personal history and the crime itself. The former president was found guilty of falsifying business records in relation to a $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels, a porn star who says she had a brief sexual tryst with Mr. Trump in 2006, in order to buy her silence.

At the presentence interview, a psychologist or social worker working for the probation department may also talk to Mr. Trump, during which time the defendant can “try to make a good impression and explain why he or she deserves a lighter punishment,” according to the New York State Unified Court System.

The pre-sentencing report can also include submissions from the defense, and may describe whether “the defendant is in a counseling program or has a steady job.”

In Mr. Trump’s case, of course, he is applying — as it were — for a steady job as president of the United States, a campaign that may be complicated by his new status as a felon. Mr. Trump will likely be required to regularly report to a probation officer, and rules on travel could be imposed.

Mr. Trump was convicted of 34 Class E felonies, New York’s lowest level, each of which carry a potential penalty of up to four years in prison. Probation or home confinement are other possibilities that Justice Merchan can consider.

That said, Justice Merchan has indicated in the past that he takes white-collar crime seriously. If he did impose prison time, he would likely impose the punishment concurrently, meaning that Mr. Trump would serve time on each of the counts he was convicted of simultaneously.

Can you imagine how Trump would be in a chat with a psychologist doing a pre-sentence report??

Can you imagine how un-seriously he would take probation visits?   

The more you think about it, the more obvious it is that anything less than a custodial sentence is wildly unlikely to have significant effect or influence on him - and surely that's one of the points of punishment?

Perchance to dream

A BBC story about the (very common) exam anxiety dream:

We may have lots going on in our lives, so why is it that exams can stand out in our dreams?

"It's a common theme to dream about anything that is threatening," says Prof Espie. Just because something is threatening it doesn't mean it's bad, he says, but it can mean it's challenging - and exams are, almost by definition, challenging.

"For most people, they don't look forward to their exams, right?"

"It's on your mind during the day, and it shouldn't surprise us that it's on our mind during the night."

Exam dreams are quite common, according to Prof Espie. "Pretty much" everyone has dreams even if they do not remember them.

"For a proportion of people those [exam dreams] are not breaking into consciousness, so you're not aware of them at all," he says.

"For some people it will be breaking through a little bit more and it will be occasional, and for some people it will be an every night problem."

I do find it somewhat surprising that, even after 40 years since my last significant exams, I can still have the occasional exam dream of the typical "but I haven't prepared for this" scenario.

Lately, I seem to be having a fair few dreams in which the problem is that I can't remember whether or not I have done something important I had to do.  I hate it when you get that type of dream and you half awake, try to think "wait, that's only a dream, isn't it?" and them fall back into semi-sleep where the anxiety feeling of not having done something resumes.

There was also an article recently in the Washington Post about what the elderly tend to dream about:

It’s one of the mysteries that sleep scientists still ponder. Do dreams change as we age? If so, how and why?

Research suggests that they do, and experts say it’s probably because of changes that occur over the life span, including in jobs, relationships, trauma, even death. Dreams often reflect these changes in ways that can be disturbing as well as pleasant. They also can include old memories that the elderly relive while sleeping, such as dreaming you are back at an old job long after leaving it.....

As we age, the frequency of erotic dreams and sports dreams declines, said Michael Schredl, research director of the Sleep Laboratory at the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim, Germany. While students are more likely to dream about friends, the elderly more often dream about relatives, he said. Older people also have nightmares less often, he said. But dreams about people who have died increase.

Older people also report dreams of being lost in a strange environment, or of searching for their car in a foreign city, Schredl said. “And there are a substantial number of work-related dreams in retired persons, often negatively toned — being back in the old job — if the job was stressful.”

Well yes, I still have dreams about my former job relatively often.   

The comments following the article are interesting too:

As a retired English professor, I often dream about being in class and teaching a topic that I have not prepared. For years, I had dreams about having a thirty page research paper due, and it is the night before the due date, and I have not started writing. Fun stuff. 

And:

I retired at age 81. My dreams since retiring are so real that I have to remember upon awakening that it was a dream. I also dream of trying to get home from a downtown area without a way to get home. I was really wondering why my dreams of work were so real and if something was going wrong with my brain. Loved reading that it is common for retirees.

More:

I’m a 77 year old man. Certainly have way fewer erotic or even pleasant dreams. And, consistent with your article, my dreams consist mainly of work related (I’ve been retired quite awhile) and travel. I’m often lost,can’t find my car, missed trains and the like.  

And the answer to this seems to be "no":

Will the "Oh My GOD I forgot to attend class all year now I have a final and I will fail and never graduate" dreams ever end?

Never had them in college. Started after I graduated

A few people miss having flying dreams.  (I'm not alone in enjoying them, then):

At 84 sadly I never dream of flying ! I loved those dreams ! ....

I used to have flying dreams once in a while. Where are those dreams? They were great.

Weren't they! I'm the same age as you and flying used to be a recurring lovely dream that I too haven't had for over 20 years. I could levitate and soar through the air just by stretching my arms out and making gentle movements like one does treading water. People would watch in amazement, but it was so easy for me! 

 That sounds just like my flying dreams! I would soar about 10 or 15 feet above the ground ( never higher which is good as I am afraid of heights) and be moving slowly and gently, more like floating. But the sensation was so strongly felt in my body that when I awoke I would be thinking I really ought to be able to do this during the day. Loved those dreams and also haven’t had them for about a decade.

I haven't read of anyone who has had my recurrent "proof of flying" dreams - which I described way back in 2006.    Haven't had one of those for some time, though.

Feeling sorry for the subcontinent (again)

In India:

Temperatures in Delhi have hit a record high of 52.9C (127.2F), as authorities warned of water shortages in India’s capital.

A heatwave alert has been in place for large parts of India since last week, but on Wednesday the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said the temperature in the suburb of Mungeshpur had passed 50C for the first time in the city.

The temperature was more than 9C higher than expected, the IMD said, and came on the second day of record-breaking heat. On Tuesday a high of 49.9C was hit in Mungeshpur and Narela, breaking the 2002 record of 49.2C....

Many blame the soaring temperatures on scorching winds from Rajasthan state, where temperatures on Tuesday reached 50.5C.

At the SMS hospital in Rajasthan’s capital, Jaipur, so many bodies of casualties of the heat have arrived at the mortuary that its capacity has been exceeded. Police in the city say many of the victims are poor labourers, who have no choice but to work outside, and homeless people.

(As I have said in previous years, it's always hard to believe that the death toll from heat in India during heatwaves is not higher than what is reported.)

Meanwhile, recently in Pakistan:

Temperatures rose above 52 degrees Celsius (125.6 degrees Fahrenheit) in Pakistan’s southern province of Sindh, the highest reading of the summer and close to the country’s record high amid an ongoing heat wave, the met office said on Monday.  

Yes, as hellish as that sounds, the top temperature a few years ago was even worse:

The highest temperature recorded in Pakistan was in 2017 when temperatures rose to 54 C (129.2 F) in the city of Turbat, located in the Southwestern province of Balochistan. This was the second hottest in Asia and fourth highest in the world, said Sardar Sarfaraz, Chief Meteorologist at the Pakistan Meteorological Department

 

In which I get to gloat a bit about commercial failure

So, that Furiosa movie which I was happy to criticise sight unseen (honestly, the chances of my liking it after I panned Fury Road were so infinitesimally small they can be ignored)  has more-or-less already been declared a box office failure because of its opening weekend take.

Really, we shouldn't be surprised.   There are lots of signs that the public is, generally, pretty much over sequels:  see the increasingly bad take of Marvel movies, the worse than expected performance of the last Mission Impossible despite good reviews, and the really bad performance of the last Indiana Jones (although many poor reviews - based more on an unfair allegation that it was too "woke" - did likely affect it.)    Yet the high brow Oppenheimer and the lightweight, but at least novel, movie Barbie did spectacularly well.

What's more, as at least one "bro" reviewer (The Critical Drinker - who didn't mind Furiosa and loved Fury Road) remembered to note:  the fans seem to think that Fury Road was a much bigger commercial success than it really was.   As someone in Forbes writes:

At baseline, Mad Max: Fury Road is not some extremely massive blockbuster superhit. The film earned $380 million worldwide on a $150 million budget and even more in marketing. Solid, but nothing too insane.   

People also seem to forget how long ago Fury Road came out - 2015!    I do agree with most people that it is doesn't feel like it was 9 years ago, but maybe the Covid years have warped our sense of time.   I guess the Star Wars prequels show that you can still make money from a long gap in the series, but they are probably the exception more than the rule.

Anyhoo - if I were in control of Hollywood at the moment, I would be throwing money at anything that is novel in both story and vision, not based on comics, and is good for charismatic new actors under 30.   (There seems to be a significant gap in the acting market in that age range.)

And yeah, the "remake old stuff but with a powerful female lead instead of a male" as a concept has finished its run, too.   

I'm busy (and I have a new phone)

 I would have bought another Vivo if only they hadn't abandoned the Australian market, so instead I went with a Xiaomi Redmi Note 13 Pro - a model that seems to have had reasonably good reviews.   I paid $629 (and an extra $70 for the fast charger - which is a tad annoying, since unboxing videos on Youtube show that in some countries, they include the charger in the box.)

This is the most expensive phone I have ever bought - I'm probably really in the "mid" range now (maybe "lower mid"?), rather than "upper budget". 

Of course, being Android, with a company overlay, it takes some getting used to learning how exactly the settings are named and hidden.   My initial impressions are that this phone does not like sticking permanently to options I tell it to use - but it is also quite likely that this is due to my lack of understanding the settings yet.   I said to someone that the trickiness of changing Android phones might be useful for helping stave off dementia - we should make the elderly swap Android phones every 12 months for this reason, as a public health measure.

Anyway, I like the screen, but it seems to keep giving me notifications on the lock screen that I don't find easily when I unlock the phone.  Odd.

This phone is also supposed to have an eSim option, but it's not obvious from the settings.  I will be annoyed if that is not really there.  More investigation needed.

So yeah, these initial comments are sounding pretty cautious - hopefully it's just teething issues. 

Update:  Am feeling pretty sure that there is in fact no eSim capability, despite the advertising on the JB Hi Fi website, and the specific enquiry about that when I was buying it.  Further discussion with the store is taking place.

Update 2:  Now, I'm not so sure.  Optus App says my phone is compatible to buy eSim here.  Yet in settings, there is no reference to eSim at all.   I almost feel forced to try buying a cheap eSim plan and try loading it to make sure it's real...

Update 3:  Well, that took another couple of hours of investigation and fiddling, and even then the answer was only found via a Reddit search!  To get the phone to show the "Use eSim" option in network settings, you have to change the region from Australia to another country - UK, Singapore, or Malaysia all work, but other countries are like Australia and don't show it at all.   (By which I mean - the slide button to "Use eSim" simply does not appear.  Change region, and it's there.)

I then could load a cheap local eSim for data service only (bought online for US$4.50), and it worked!  I don't know if I had to, but I switched the region back to Australia and it still worked.    This is secret knowledge that was not easy to track down.  Ordinary Google searches did not turn it up.

This is excellent:   I can now pre purchase an eSim and be ready to go without finding a sim card at the airport on arrival.  

The game-ification of violence [an old(er) man complaint]

There was very little chance that I would like any series based on a video game that begins with a warning of "strong blood and violence", but I gave the first episode of Fallout a go.   

I found it very un-engaging and dull:  as I said to my son (who didn't exactly give it a rave review, either) nothing about it feels real.   By which I meant:  "of course a story based on a post apocalyptic video game is not going to 'feel real' in a literal sense, but in the shallow way the characters feel drawn, the emphasis on visual effects, and the over-the-top violence and blood, its video game origins are far too obvious."

And the frequent ironic use of 50's music just played like a tiresome gimmick we've seen before that was trying too hard.   Hey, I've found a review that complains about it feeling shallow, too:

Startlingly glib, one-note, and yet self-assured in its vacant design, the series reveals its shallow hand very early. “Fallout” endlessly reprises the wholesome quaintness vs. the grotesque or freakishly ruthlessness mode of apposition and fails to do anything remotely interesting with it, reinforcing what swiftly becomes a long, tiresome pattern and slog....

...the game’s milieu was one of atompunk retrofuturism, juxtaposing 1950s post-war idealism—the naïve promise of space-age technology and nuclear war anxieties— against the framework of a ravaged and dangerous apocalypse. While “Fallout,” the series, presents the concepts and throwback aesthetics faithfully, that’s unfortunately all it’s got in its trivial toolkit. What it does with it beyond that devoted presentation is just banal, insipidly trying to make a big meal out of a thin idea that is barely sustainable nourishment. 

Finally, let me slip into my oft-repeated complaint:  the "game-ification" of, and desensitisation to, ultra violence that both modern movies and video games have brought is shameful and a bad thing for society.   (And my follow up for even-handedness - I know, past generations might have thought nothing of a day out to view a real execution, or of kids watching a cow or pig being slaughtered.   I don't think watching human executions is ever a sign of a good society, either.)    But the way we have gone from at least some adults thinking that young kids playing with toy guns was an unfortunate endorsement of violence, to now barely a parent being concerned that their 10 year old is splattering characters and watching them explode in a gallon of blood is, well, really something. 

Anyway, I think it likely that the really enthusiastic reviews will mainly come from people under 40 who have played the game.  As Rolling Stone wrote:

...like the soundtrack, there are pieces of so many other movies and shows — Apple’s Silo beat it to market by a year with its own (albeit more dramatic) portrait of post-apocalyptic underground life — that much of it plays as ripping off other material, even though the games have been around in various forms since the late Nineties. 

...even if Last of Us didn’t exist, Fallout would still feel like an arch and overly-familiar series, with enough interesting performances and background details to keep it from being a waste of time, but not enough spark of its own to be fully satisfying. Though maybe fans of the game will feel differently.

 

Turbulence worry

I'm pleased to see that the nearly all reporting on the terrible Singapore Airlines turbulence injury story has included reference to studies that said climate change has already increased turbulence and it will get worse.   I had wondered if this might be overlooked, but no:

Here's a Nature article about it.